


Otherworldly

by theoddling



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Comfort, Fluff, implied Hargreeves!reader
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:34:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26909710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoddling/pseuds/theoddling
Summary: "I have this yurt just outside Reykjavik..."When Klaus and the reader escape for some time away from it all, the stillness creates time to think and one night it all spills over under the northern lights. Luckily, Klaus is good at picking up pieces.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves/Reader
Kudos: 16





	Otherworldly

You yawned, stretching and rolling over in the pile of blankets, pillows, and furs, the mattress sinking beneath your movements. It was much darker than it had been, the only lights in the circular space a thin shred of moonlight filtering down from the chimney hole and the faint red glow of campfire coals. 

Sitting up, you kept one of the soft woolen blankets around your shoulder with one hand and awkwardly shoved boots onto your socked feet with the other.

It was noticeably, blessedly silent. You took that to mean that the unwanted guests that had come to visit you earlier were finally gone. But at the same time, you didn’t hear Klaus either, which concerned you and made you feel colder than the air possibly could. Ever since time traveling, you hated him being out of sight, the idea of losing him threatening to suffocate you it was so frightening. 

“Klaus?” you called, wrapping the blanket tighter around you rather than hunting around in the dark for your coat, and wandering to the door-flap.

When the cult had been immediately overwhelming, their presence threatening to push you to a panic attack as they crowded about, Klaus had suggested sneaking off, just the two of you to his yurt in Iceland. You assumed at first that it was some sort of strange, Klausian innuendo. But, as it turned out, he had meant a real yurt, actually outside Reykjavik. You two had been here, blissfully isolated in a world of your own for going on three weeks, and part of you never wanted to go back to civilization. 

Except when he wandered off into the rolling, snow covered land around you. Sometimes it was only for a few minutes, or not far from the yurt. Other times, he’d leave you for hours, with no idea where he was or what might happen to him. In his defense, you hadn’t told him what it felt like or the fear that gripped your heart in a vice, so used to being strong and supportive for him that you had long forgotten how to let yourself be vulnerable, how to need help without feeling weak. If there was one thing ingrained in you from your childhood, it was that _weakness_ was a personal failing and negated any good or worth in you. Or at least, that’s what your dearly departed father had taught you. 

Your breath was coming quicker, short, shallow bursts that warned of worse to come. 

“Klaus?” you called again, more frantically this time, voice breaking. 

You exited the tent, whipping your head around wildly to find him, blood racing in your ears when you didn’t spot him immediately. 

“Y/N?” you heard his soft voice finally, just about the time everything was tunneling, as he rounded the large tent-structure. “I didn’t realize you were up.”

You nodded, not quite trusting your voice as relief washed over you. 

“Well, since you are, there’s something I want to show you.” 

You took his out-stretched hand, twining his icy fingers with your own, and let him lead you. To the ends of the Earth if he wanted to. You kept your eyes on your feet as you stumbled behind his surprisingly nimble steps up the rocky hills behind your abode. The higher you climbed in the darkness, the more you became nervous for a new reason, fearing that one of you would lose their footing and fall, and then one of you would lose the other as surely as if you were separated again in space and time, with no hope of reunion this time. 

Finally, just as you were about to express your concern, you crested the top of the hills onto a wide plateau. A thin stream burbled nearby, cutting through rock and snow in a winding path that crossed yours before twisting away again to a shallow pool on the other side of the space. The wind whistled around you, making you shiver and marvel at how Klaus stood there, so calm and still despite the plummeting temperatures. It ruffled his long hair, promising hours of detangling later, which you found yourself looking forward to, taking advantage of the time to card your fingers through the soft curls in all the ways you both loved. 

He turned around to face you excitedly and laughed.

“What?” you asked, frowning in confusion at his amusement. 

“You,” he said, shaking his head playfully. “I know I’m beautiful, but this is ridiculous Y/N.”

“I…what is? I was just…admiring how free you look right now. Is that a problem somehow?”

His grin was blinding. “I bring you to this gorgeous sight and you’re too busy staring at me to even notice. It’s adorable.”

“I mean, I guess it’s a nice plateau, but you could have brought me in the morning.”

“Look up, you silly goose.”

You did you were told and felt the air rush from your lungs. “Oh…” 

Above you both, the cobalt sky was dotted with stars like shards of ice and the pale white sliver of moon, and cutting through it all in ephemeral ribbons of pinks and green, dancing like the gowns of a hundred heavenly gods, was the aurora borealis.

Despite the stunning sight, your gaze wandered back down to Klaus who was watching you watch the lights, the flickering of the sky above you reflected in his emerald eyes and casting an unearthly pattern over him like some fae king come to steal you away. For a moment, he didn’t seem real, an illusion or dream only and it brought an unbidden sob to your lips. Once the first had escaped, it was like a floodgate opening and all of the fear and pain you had been feeling spilled forth. 

Two strong but frigid arms wrapped around you, pulling you close as you cried, and even in your distress you instinctively opened the blanket so that it could cocoon you both.

“Hey, sh-sh-sh…” he murmured, pressing his lips to your crown. “Y/N, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything. I…I don’t know anymore,” you sniffed.

“Talk to me?” he asked.

And that was all he needed to say. Everything you had bottled up came flooding out of you, your tongue practically tripping over itself in your rush to explain your fears of losing him and how you missed your own time and everyone you knew and even though you wanted to spend forever with him, it was still lonely not knowing anyone and thinking that the rest of the Academy was gone, how being in the 60s and trying to move on made you feel broken and lost.

“I just…feel like everything’s gone and without it I don’t even know who I am, let alone what to do. And sometimes it’s like I can’t breathe because of it,” you finished, shaking your head and pressing your face to his chest and feeling his hug tighten.

“Oh, Y/N,” he sighed. “I understand. And it’s going to be okay. When it was just me, I wanted to be numb, or nothing at all. I wish you’d told me sooner, before it got so bad and I could have helped…”

“I…didn’t know how to.”

You both lapsed into silence for a while, simply taking in each other’s embrace, each other’s essence. 

“How can I fix it?” he asked finally, breath fluttering the hair by your ear.

“I think you already did. I just needed to let it out and be told it would be okay,” you admitted sheepishly.

“Promise me you’ll talk to me from now on?”

You nodded. “I promise.”

“Good.” 

He brushed a tender kiss to your lips and you felt him smile against you, before breaking away and twirling you in his arms so that your back was pressed to his chest and your head tucked perfectly into the hollow of his throat. You whined at the loss of his lips on yours and he chuckled, the feel rumbling through you.

“The lights aren’t this bright very often. We should enjoy it while we can,” he scolded. 

You looked up at him, his profile rising above you, glowing in the night and completely serene, a truly magical sight, countering the very solid, real feel of his hold on you to create a strange certainty that he was indeed an otherworldly being, but he was yours and if he wasn’t real than neither were you. Comforted by the odd thought and by him, you smiled, turning back to watch the sky. And for at least a moment, everything was perfect.


End file.
